bested Berklee College of Music ($16,950), Fordham ($15,374), and UC Berkeley ($15,304).

Incidentally, all 4 offer a meal plan.

surpassed Pace Univ-New York ($14,800), UC Merced ($14,272), UCLA ($14,232), and Emerson College ($13,958), and others, ending with Vermont College of Fine Arts ($1,197).

2,772 out of the other 3,121 colleges were ruled out due to missing, unknown, or not-applicable values for cost of typical room and board, e.g., Landmark College.

1. The costs of room and board are from the Institutional Characteristics Data File 2012-2013 (Provisional Release) as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds).
   

UC Santa Cruz is in Santa Cruz, CA, is public, research intensive, a top-100 party school, a top-100 happiest school, has a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, has its top Masters major in education, offers on-campus housing, requires test scores for undergrad admissions, its top major is psychology, is on the quarter system, its top Doctoral major is English language and literature/letters, other, and enrolls from 10,000 to 19,999 students.

• Webometrics world ranking (87th place)
• ARWU world ranking (101st place)
• Times Higher Education world ranking (136th place)
• PayScale mid-career median salary ranking (360th place)
• research spending ($111.0M)
• average full-time teaching salary ($103,304)
• out-of-state undergrad tuition & fees ($36,294)
• average grant aid to undergrads ($17,418)
• cost of typical room and board ($14,861)
• in-state undergrad tuition & fees ($13,416)
• average undergrad student loan ($6,063)
• research spending per student ($5,954)
• endowment per full-time student ($3,120)
• non-resident tuition & fees surcharge (170.5%)
• in-state freshmen (97.4%)
• undergrads among full-time students (91.8%)
• full-time retention rate (91%)
• undergrads who get financial aid (76%)
• undergrads who receive student loans (60%)
• ratio of female full-time freshmen (55.3%)
• minorities (43.6%)
• undergrads who get Pell grants (42%)
• Hispanics (21.7%)
• average teaching salary differential (men vs. women, 20.3%)
• grad students who are under 25 years old (20.2%)
• Asians (19.3%)
• tuition & fees increase over three years (12.8%)
• undergrads who are 25 years or older (4.3%)
• Blacks or African Americans (2.1%)
• foreign students (1.5%)
• American Indians or Alaska Natives (0.5%)
• average teaching salary differential (women vs. men, -16.9%)
• 25th percentile SAT math score (520)
• 25th percentile SAT reading score (500)
• 25th percentile SAT writing score (500)
• 75th percentile SAT math score (640)
• 75th percentile SAT reading score (620)
• 75th percentile SAT writing score (620)
• alumni who played in the National Football League (0)
• average January temperature (51.9 degrees)
• dorm capacity (7,922)
• first-year applicants (28,230)
• foreign students (289)
• full-time grad students (1,366)
• full-time undergrads (15,562)
• grad students (1,426)
• members of the National Academy of Sciences (9)
• men's basketball Final Four appearances (0)
• Rhodes Scholar alumni (0)
• total 75th percentile SAT score (1,880)
• undergrads (15,978)
• yearly for-credit students (18,651)
• on-campus yearly property crimes per thousand students (1.63)
• students per faculty member (18)
• annual rainfall (31.4 inches)
• diversity and inclusion ratio (0.31)
• elevation (243 meters)

Sources